Starting Your Web Business – 5 Things you Must Know
To new and old webmasters starting a web business: These five basics will help you get your internet business off to a great start – and possibly make improvements to your existing one.
#1: Get Your Own Domain Name.
If your business does not have its own domain name, you are sending a clear signal to other internet users.
And it’s not a very good one.
Using something like http://users.yourisp.com/yourname/index.htm as a business website address gives many web users the impression that you don’t really take your business seriously.
Some will avoid dealing with you based on this one fleeting impression. Can you afford to be turning this business away?
You can purchase domain names from thousands of resellers. I’d STRONGLY recommend you use NameCheap.com
This registrar won’t steal your name immediately after you do an availability search, unlike some other very popular and well promoted registrars.
My post about The Radio Rule will help you with choosing a domain name.
#2. Use your domain name for all email addresses.
Many businesses with their own domain name still continue to advertise their old, ISP based email address instead of their own domain based email address after they start their web business.
Ie They’ll use www.businessname.com for their website, and then have something like businessname@aol.com as their contact email address.
This is crazy, because it
· Locks you into using your current ISP permanently
· Undermines your marketing, branding, and promotional efforts
· Gives free promotion to another company every time you give out your contact details.
· Gives your business an unprofessional internet image.
If the ISP goes out of business, your contact details on advertisements and promotional materials will be useless.
Of course, you will still receive email sent to your ISP based address as long as your account there remains open.
However, you should stop giving the old ISP based address as the contact address for your business. Just start using your new address on signs, business cards, stationery, advertisements, etc.
# 3: Make Sure that your domain name works without the “www” prefix..
Many hosting companies still set up their systems so that www is needed in front of your domain name to access your website.
This is a problem, because many people leave off the www prefix when typing in web addresses.
If your website needs the this prefix, they’ll get an error message – and assume that your site is not available. And move to the next supplier on their list.
Try your own website now. If it doesn’t work without www, get in touch with your web host and get them to fix it. It’s a simple technical adjustment, and should cost you nothing.
Dropping off the www also has some little known benefits when promoting your business
· In spoken advertisements, you can gain 2 seconds of promotional time if you don’t have to say "Doubleyoo Doubleyoo Doubleyoo dot" before your web address.
· On posters, signs, and in newspaper advertisements where you have to work in a fixed width, you can make your domain name larger and more prominent if you leave out the WWW
#4: Put Full contact details on EVERY page of your website.
Many people print out web pages of products, services, etc to read while they are away from the computer.
They make purchase decisions by comparing printed copies of your information with those of your competitors.
If your contact information is not printed on those pages, they’ll probably call your smarter competitors, who provided email addresses and phone numbers.
Please Note: Some web designers disagree violently with this concept, and feel that it "spoils the artistic look" of your web pages.
Remember that you’re the boss. Decide what’s more important for your business: the ability for clients to easily get in touch with you, OR the artistic feelings of your web designer.
#5: Make sure that your web pages print properly
It’s really frustrating when you print out several pages of a website, and the right side has been chopped off.
Don’t let this happen to your pages. Make sure that whoever develops your website makes sure that pages can be printed without getting chopped off.
Internet Explorer with standard settings will print a page up to 637 pixels wide without chopping anything off.
Of course, it’s possible to adjust modern browsers to print the entire page, even if it is greater that 637 pixels wide.
But most people visiting your site won’t know how to do that. And just curse you because their prints are chopped off.
#6 Traditional Bonus Tip: Don’t use huge graphics with dark backgrounds
If people curse you because their pages get chopped off, they’ll be chasing you with axes if you produce pages with huge, black background headers, footers, and images.
Because printing out 10 pages could pretty well empty their expensive ink cartridges.
Also another excellent information. There is so much to be learned and nobody really show or tell you these things. No support, and everything is money money money that is the reason why we get into these business’s to make money not just to be spending spending spending money you don’t have. I would really love to talk with you. Thanks for the info.